Abstract
This paper presents the WASTREAM software suite developed by Tractebel to support an integrated decommissioning project.
In the framework of dismantling a nuclear installation, being able to correctly estimate the waste and material fluxes is crucial. Indeed, the preparation of dismantling activities and the drafting of regulatory files such as dismantling plans and safety analysis reports require estimations of waste and effluent productions, discharges, etc.
Therefore, it is necessary to gather a description of the dismantling activities and an estimation of the waste they produce, which in turn enables to evaluate the storage capacities to be installed. Moreover, logistics calculations performed in order to design the dismantling facilities (generally incorporating treatment units and buffer storage spaces) require also a precise evaluation of the waste masses as well as their radiological content during the dismantling activities.
Those waste estimations are then based on several sources of information: the installation physical inventory, the radiological characterization of the assets, the dismantling schedule and the description of material and waste streams (succession of the treatments and conditioning that the materials undergo from their dismantling to their interim storage/final disposal or clearance). Regular updates are necessary for these evaluations.
The WASTREAM software suite has been developed for this purpose. The software allows, on the one hand to define waste stream models and, on the other hand to establish the link between the installation physical inventory, the waste streams and the dismantling phase. It then provides means for calculating, analyzing and visualizing the quantities of waste produced. It is designed to be fast running and compatible with a wide variety of physical inventory databases and dismantling schedule.
In particular, WASTREAM has been connected to the platform developed in the framework of the PLEIADES project (European Commission funded project for connecting digital tools for smarter nuclear decommissioning). 3D models and databases of the PLEIADES case studies are used to showcase WASTREAM capabilities for supporting nuclear installations’ dismantling.
